The Federal Defenders of Eastern Washington and Idaho is a Community
Defender program for Eastern Washington and Central and Northern
Idaho with staffed offices in Spokane and Yakima. The non-profit
corporation was established in 1991 and began taking cases in
April, 1992. In March, 1994, the organization began taking cases
from North and Central Idaho followed by Southern Idaho in October
1996. The organization opened a Capital Habeas Unit in Moscow,
Idaho in September, 1996. In 2006, the Boise, Pocatello, and
Moscow offices formed their own Idaho
Community Defender.

Today, as a Community Defender Program, the organization
is a non-profit corporation with up to a fifteen-member Board
of Directors. We are committed to the zealous representation
of persons accused of federal crimes in our District.

"That is a small sample of the kinds of confusion one
can see when a jury confronts a complex verdict form. In the
mock trial observation room, counsel and clients might be
tearing their hair out over mistakes that could risk an inconsistent
or ambiguous verdict in the actual trial. Lawyers and judges
will strive mightily to clarify the verdict form and make
sure it has clear skip instructions, but it is easy to see
that most verdict forms, particularly special verdict forms
in complex trials, sow barriers in the way of a clear or simple
verdict. " -By Dr. Ken Broda-Bahm

"A picture can be worth a thousand words. And, it turns
out, that picture can also make the words you do use more
believable. Researchers point to this as the “truthiness”
effect, in homage to comedian Stephen Colbert’s neologism
for the feeling of something being true independent of its
actual truth value. The current issue of The Jury Expert,
features not one, but two new articles focusing on that effect.
One is a discussion by a law professor and a cognitive psychologist
(Newman & Feigenson, 2013), and the other is a research
review by a litigation consultant (Kellermann, 2013). Both
articles point to a wide array of evidence demonstrating the
tendency for claims to be more credible when they're accompanied
by even nonprobative graphics. In other words, put a picture
on it, and it becomes more believable, or to use the term
that’s now made the dictionary, more truthy. "
By Dr. Ken Broda-Bahm

"Much has been written about the hero's journey as Joseph
Campbell described it in his seminal work, The Hero with a
Thousand Faces. In this 1949 book, Campbell asserts that storytellers
worldwide, in their best stories, have for centuries used
a story structure that he calls the monomyth. From Beowulf
to Ulysses to Luke Skywalker, the pattern is seen over the
ages." Written by Ken Lopez, Founder/CEO A2L Consulting.

"The U.S. government’s criminalization of immigrants
has marooned thousands of men and women in the quagmire where
criminal and immigration laws meet. For this latest post in
NIJC’s These Lives Matter series, two members of NIJC’s
legal staff and a federal defender in Texas tell the story
of how they are working together to help a hardworking father
keep his green card." Read he article written by Gabriel
Reyes, Assistant Federal Defender, Alpine, Texas.

Effective Advocacy by Steve Sady on Compassionate Release.
Linked via the Ninth
Cir. blog is an effective piece by Steve Sady on the BOP's
failure to abide by its compassionate release obligations.
There's a video of Steve's client, who died just a week after
it was filmed. The video is both an effective piece of advocacy
for policy-makers and a reminder of why we need to keep the
lines of communication open with our clients even after they
are sentenced and in the BOP. Had it not been for the involvement
of Steve's office, the client would have died in prison instead
of at home, with his family. Visit the Ninth
Cir. blog.